Clifton Standing Stones

Standing Stones

Clifton Standing Stones (Crummack/Cromlech Stones) (Standing Stones) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 12 images, 3 fieldnotes, 1 piece of folklore, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

To elaborate on Fitzcoraldo's comment that "There is one large stone that may be earthfast and a number of other stones"... at this second collection of stones that are seemingly in alignment with the standing stones, beside the large elongated stone layn in the ground, one of those other stones, though small, much smaller than the other stnding stones, is actually steadfast in the ground and standing.

Also, the OS map associates 'The Hag' with something in this area, though I can't tell what.

Clifton is the next vilage along from Eamont Bridge on the A6 south.
We tried to access the stones via the footpath at Mount Clifton but the farmer had not kept the path clear and it would have meant taking two lads through a bunch of agro-industrial stuff. So we used the path from Clifton Hall instead. This turned out to have a bonus because there's a Peel tower that you can have a mooch around.
Cross the motorway using the bridge and follow the path south along the side of the motorway. Once you get to the gate you can see the stones a couple of fields away. Just before you walk down the field boundary towards the stones, check out the field clearance in the corner of the field. There is one large stone that may be earthfast and a number of other stones. This clearance is on the same alignment as the two standing stones.
The stones themselves are a handsome pair of boulders a big 'un and a little 'un. They are made of a red stone. The smallest stone has been set in concrete. They are aligned NW-SE.
There is a nice view of eastern Penrith to the north

Folklore

In the pasture on the eastern bank of the Louther, In the way to Clifton, are several cairns, or carracks, as the Scotch call them, made of dry stones heaped together; also many other monuments of stones, three, four, five set upright together. They are generally by the country people said to be done by Michael Scot, a noted conjuror in their opinion, who was a monk of Holm abbey in Cumberland: they have a notion too that one Turquin, a giant, lived at Brougham castle; and there is a tower there, called Pagan tower; and Sir Lancelo de Lake lived at Mayborough, and flew him. Near Clifton is a famous spring, where the people go annually on May-day to drink, by custom beyond all remembrance: they hold it an earnest of good luck the ensuing year, to be there and drink of the water before sun-rise. This no doubt has been continued from British times, and is a remain of the great quarterly festival of the vernal equinox.

Miscellaneous

According to Tom Clare in his excellent new book, Prehistoric Monuments of the Lake District.
"in the nineteenth century they were variously referred to as Crummack Stone and Cromlech Stone; the latter suggesting that they were considered to be the remains of a tomb."

Prehistoric Monuments of the Lake District
by Tom Clare
2007
Tempus Publishing Ltd

According to the RSM, the smaller southern stone was re-erected in 1977, when a small, plough damaged cairn was found immediately to the east of the stones. In the central area of the cairn there was found a large amount of burnt bone, interpreted as the remains of several humans.

In Burls from "Carnac to Callanish" he mentions a row at Lowther Woodhouse that supposedly led to a cairn near Yanwath Wood and adds 'but this is hearsay without confirmation'.
These two stones are 750m from Yanwath Woodhouse and are 300m from Yanwath wood.
Is this the row that Burl had heard of?